99% of what is discussed in blockchain conferences and meetings is wrong. People don’t understand it, can’t define it, are investing in the wrong blockchains and don’t know why. What is the long-term outlook for blockchain technology and is it ether or bitcoin or something else?

There are a lot of big players getting in the market. Smaller companies are raising rounds of funding. Crypto-currency and non-crypto advocates are taking different paths. Other non-financial services industries are waking up. Our first panel explores what is happening in the Blockchain space.

David Haimes – Senior Director, Cloud ERP Product Development, Oracle

Richard Kastelein – Founder, Blockchain News

Ajit Tripathi – Director Financial Services: Fintech and Digital, PwC

Richard Muirhead – General Partner, OpenOcean

09.45 – 10.15

Assets & Tokenization of Value: The Blockchain Panel

Assets, bonds, property titles are all fair game for tokenization on distributed ledgers. We’ll explore what’s happening in the space and what you can expect in the near future.

Dea Markova, Head of Programmes – Innovate Finance

Dimitri De Jonghe, Core Developer – BigchainDB

Marta Piekarska, Security Architect, Blockstream

Dan Hughes, CEO/CTO – RADiX (formerly eMunie)

Hugh Madden, CTO – Equichain

10.15 – 10.45

Applied Blockchain – Keynote

Adi Ben-Ari, CEO – Applied Blockchain & CTO – Tallysticks

10.45 – 11.15

Coffee Break

11.15 – 11.45

The crucial role of Blockchain in (local) governments and various industries

During today’s seminar we’ll provide unique insight in what the Blockchain technology is and how it can be used in various different industries. Existing business models are being disrupted and new ones are being created. As technology around us is changing with an unprecedented speed and in order to stay relevant during the digital disruption we need to change the way how we think and how we work. Blockchain has the potential being one of the major enablers to disrupt all industries. On stage Michael and John are talking about real life examples levering the Blockchain.

Wilfried Hoffman – Co-Founder, Tymlez

John Verwaayen – General Manager, Magic Software Benelux

11.45 – 12.00

Blockchain and Music

Panos co-founded the non-profit Open Music Initiative, in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, and its mission is to promote and advance the development of open source standards and innovation related to music to help assure proper compensation for all creators, performers and rights holders of music. The initiative launched with more than 60 companies involved including: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, BMG, Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, SoundCloud, Netflix, SiriusXM as well as a number of rights related Blockchain startups. In November 2016, Open Music Initiative announced a further 80 partners, including Dubset, Napster, Red Bull, The Orchard, Sonos, SoundExchange, Viacom, GMR Marketing, 7 Digital and performing rights societies SOCAN (Canada) and BUMA (Netherlands).

Panos Panay – Managing Director, Open Music Initiative (USA)

12.00 – 12.15

Blockchain and Logistics

Martijn has identified logistic parties with interest for the Blockchain like ports, financial institutions, and an international auction company. This initiative has led to a broad consortium of logistic, supply chain and financial parties that are going to do research how the Blockchain could work for them. The end goal will be to have several working Blockchain applications for logistics and finance in optimizing the whole supply chain. There is a number of use cases identified around finance which will be presented. The research is done with knowledge institutes with in-depth knowledge of blockchain (TU Delft) and Supply Chain Finance (Windesheim).

Non-profits measure their fundraising efficiency on cost to raise a Pound but speed to raise a Pound is important too. In the past, donors would mail in checks in order to donate and some still do. Charities have to wait for the mail and then for the check to clear. Credit cards and e-commerce have accelerated the transaction process, which is helpful during rapid onset emergencies in particular. Digital currencies can minimize chargebacks and since BitPay waives fees, more of the net donation actually comes to the charity.

Karl Hoods – CIO, Save the Children (UK)

12.30 – 13.30

Lunch

13.30 – 14.00

Panel: From Concept to Startup

How Blockchain companies move from concept to prototype and beyond.

Peter Bidewell, CMO – Applied Blockchain

Alastair Johnson, CEO – Nuggets

Guido Branca, CEO – BABB

Steve Pomfret, CEO – Cygnetise

Stephane Cheikh, Ventures & Innovation Manager – SITA

14.00 – 14.30

Regulation, Compliance & Innovation

Is technology moving too fast for regulators to keep up? What are the implications of DAO and varied international interpretations of the same technology?

The power to govern is often asserted, but it may or may not be based on authentic social consent. This is an important issue because open networks are changing the nature of legitimate authority and the consent of the governed. User communities are increasingly asserting their own authority, assigning identities to people, and allocating rights and privileges in the manner of any conventional institution. A distributed database has a lot of advantages, not only in terms of scalability but also for other key functionality such as a permissioning system. John will take a very good look at managing identity in a distributed network.

John Clippinger – CEO, ID3 / MIT Media Lab (USA)

15.00 – 15.15

Tea Break

15.15 – 15.45

Manage Disruption: Intro and CIO Panel

There are still challenges to overcome, but Blockchain technology stands poised to rewrite how business is conducted if its potential is achieved. Are you ready? Marc works with businesses to prevent them losing their competitive advantage to disruptors large and small. Marc used to be the principal at Forrester’s Executive Program.

Marc Dowd – Managing Director, Manage Disruption

Ricky Crafford – Executive Transformation Leader

Gareth Ash – CIO, Gadfa Management Ltd

Michael Harris – Group Head of IT, Tokio Marine Kiln

15.45 – 16.15

The Future of Blockchain

Our experts chime in on what the near term future holds for DLT along with some predictions on the longer term.

Richard Crook – Head of Innovation Engineering, Royal Bank of Scotland